


an endless sunrise

by dilkirani



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Jemma gets to make her feelings clear to Fitz before they rescue Will, Season 3 AU, and Will lives, but there's no continued love triangle, or angst with a slightly smutty ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/pseuds/dilkirani
Summary: Jemma needs to tell Fitz how she really feels, they need to rescue Will, and then, maybe then, they'll find their happily ever after. A season 3 AU.





	an endless sunrise

Jemma stands outside of Fitz’s bunk, hand raised to knock, and hesitates. Instead, she presses it against her forehead, trying to control the pulsing of her temple. She licks her lips unconsciously, imagines that she can still taste him. She has found herself fixating on how unexpectedly soft his lips had been. How he had tasted so like _Fitz_ , and how she hadn’t known what that could mean until the moment she experienced it.

Fitz had left the mission planning meeting with barely a glance towards her, explaining that he wanted to get as much sleep as possible before their early morning departure for the former facilities of Malick’s independent contractors. She shouldn’t be here; she should respect the distance he obviously needs from her. At the very least, she should allow him a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. But his words won’t stop ringing in her head. Perhaps there are more important things to worry about, but all she can think is that if she dies, everything she has struggled to voice will suffocate with her, and he will never know. After everything, he deserves to hear this from her.

She punches in his code before she can talk herself out of it and pushes his door cautiously open. He’s curled up on his side, wrapped around a pillow, and he looks so small in this moment that she has to choke back a sob. Ever since her return, he’s been excessively careful around her—always positive, never tired. It’s only now that she can see his own faded bruises, the dark circles under his eyes, the new defined muscles she knows instinctively he hasn’t earned from the gym.

She kneels next to his bed and reaches a hand towards his face. “Fitz,” she whispers, and he startles awake, inhaling sharply and falling back.

“Jemma?” he gasps, holding a hand against his chest as if to keep his heart in place. “Are you okay? What happened?”

She wants to cry so badly she can feel the pressure building in her sinuses. But if she cries, he will comfort her, and she has taken too much of his comfort. She came here to say it, to say one thing only, and then she will let him have his space. It’s just that the words are so much harder than they should be, especially when he’s looking at her like she’s holding a knife to his throat.

“Fitz, I…” She breathes in deeply, grateful he hasn’t turned on the light. “I love you. I just needed to tell you. Because you asked me about Will, but you didn’t ask...and it’s different, but I...you should know.”

He studies her for a few seconds, and she has a wild hope that he’s going to kiss her again. Her limbs tremble in anticipation. Then he blinks and the spell is broken.

“Jemma,” he sighs, looking away. “It’s okay. I know it’s different. I know we...we weren’t anything.”

“How can you say that?” she practically whimpers, before she can stop herself.

He brings a hand up to rub his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, of course you love me. We're best friends. But anything else was only a possibility. That’s why it’s different with Will. I understand, okay?”

Fitz looks so lovely, silhouetted in the darkness, and she is so frustrated with him, with his perfect features and perfect patience and perfect inability to interpret her words correctly. “That’s not why it’s different, Fitz.” She feels guilty for telling him before she tells Will; there has to be some etiquette she’s not following properly. But she supposes she would be forgiven, considering the circumstances.

“Will is...he’s a good man. He really is. And I care about him and I thought...I thought we could have been happy. We could have made the most of our lives there. I owe him so much. But I _love_ you, Fitz. You’re…” She shakes her head, can’t believe after a decade of choosing Fitz, of being by his side the whole damn time, she can’t articulate the way he makes her heart crack wide open, the way he makes her question a scientific understanding of the universe because surely their atoms were meant to fit together, always. Of course he doesn’t understand what she means by _different_.

She smiles. “You know what Will told me once? He said I talked about you a lot. That your name was like my favorite word, and it seemed you were more than just a best friend.” Fitz doesn’t say anything, and she laughs softly. “I thought about that constantly, your name being my favorite word, and it’s true. Fitz, you’re my favorite _everything_. And it’s such a cliche, but I don’t think I really understood that until the moment I truly believed I’d never see you again.”

He stares at her, tears hanging on his lashes, and then he stretches forward and hugs her so tightly she gasps. He shudders violently, his wracking sobs reverberating through her own bones, and she wonders briefly if he’d ever allowed himself to break apart like this while she was missing.

“I lost hope,” he confesses, his lips forming the words against her neck. “Everyone thinks I never gave up hope, but I did. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Jemma. I should have worked faster, I should have...I thought I’d never see you again and I couldn’t, I couldn’t—”

She threads her fingers through his hair, inhaling his scent. When he cries, he smells like the ocean and it should hurt, but instead it reminds her of her own strength and everything they’ve already survived.

“Hope,” she says, “is a difficult thing to sustain. I understand that more than most people. But you saved me. That’s all that matters now.” She tips his face up to meet his eyes. She lived on a blue planet for six months and never once saw this particular hue. Perhaps it’s for the best; perhaps it would have broken her even more.

She wants to taste him again so she falls forward, but he holds her still.

“You don’t believe me,” she whispers, dejected.

“I do believe you,” he replies. “But I can’t...I can’t lose you again.”

“ _Fitz_ ,” she says.

He looks away, like he always does when he’s not brave enough to see her reaction. “I just think it’s...it’s too soon. I shouldn’t have, earlier—I shouldn’t… We need to get Will back and you need to heal and then, maybe then—”

“Don’t say ‘maybe,’” she counters, more fiercely than she’d intended. “You’re still giving me an out.”

“Jemma,” he pleads, “you’ve gone through an unimaginable trauma. Of _course_ I’m giving you an out.”

She scoffs and fights the urge to roll her eyes. But she also recognizes her own need to rush her recovery. Only minutes ago, she was afraid to tell him she loved him, even though she used to sign letters to him “love, Jemma,” as if it were easy. If she had been that afraid, perhaps he’s right to want to go slowly. On Maveth, after the bottle broke, time crashed to a stop and considering her future, _any_ future, became excruciating. Here, she struggles to remind herself that time does not have to be her enemy.

“You’re right,” she finally says. “But would it be okay if I…?” She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging her down next to him. He lifts the blanket over them both. It’s the closest he’s allowed them to be since their kiss and she imagines drawing him into her so she can never lose him again.

Fitz places a kiss against her temple, right where it had been throbbing, and his tenderness brings tears to her eyes. “Good night, Jemma,” he says, but she’s already asleep.

++

Jemma runs to the containment pod. There’s a rushing in her ears and everyone else blurs and fades into the background. Until this moment, she had never allowed herself to even conceive of the possibility that Fitz might not return, but now she is torn between needing to know and being terrified to find out. This is watching a bottle full of hope hurtling towards salvation all over again. _Oh god please_ , she thinks _, I can’t survive another shattering._

Will sits on a bench in the pod, a slightly stunned expression on his face. There’s something jarring about seeing him with a stark white, high-tech background, like he's a figment of her imagination. But Fitz is not there, Fitz is not next to him like he should be. She freezes, turns into nothing. Will makes eye contact then and smiles at her, and still she cannot move.

“Jemma,” a voice whispers from somewhere over her shoulder, and a cacophony of sound slams back into her skull. She whirls around, nearly losing her balance, and he’s standing there, just standing, bruised and bloodied and so alive she nearly weeps.

“Jemma,” he says again. “We saved Will. He’s fine, you can—” She lunges for him before he can finish, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him flush with her body. She presses her face to his shoulder and breathes through the fabric of his shirt. The coppery smell of blood mingling with ancient dirt takes her right back to Maveth. She almost confesses something terrible—that she is weak and she needs him, and she would sacrifice everyone in the world to keep him safe.

“You came back to me,” she says instead, and somehow he holds her even more tightly.

“I promised I would,” he answers, but there’s something in the way his voice catches on the levity that tells her horrible things have happened. She wants to disappear with him, but he places a kiss to the top of her head and gently extricates himself.

“You should see Will.” Fitz studies her, softly and a little sadly. “It, uh, wasn’t an easy escape.”

She nods, inhaling sharply through the pain of stepping back from Fitz. Her hand runs down his arm until she can intertwine her fingers with his, and then slowly she lets go.

++

“Hi,” she says, awkwardly. She’s used to SHIELD achieving the impossible, so part of her isn’t surprised to see Will relaxing against the pod wall. But his appearance makes the reality of her time on Maveth slam into her ribcage like an anvil. All of it had happened, and all of it had been so very terrible.

Will smiles over at her but doesn’t get up. “Sorry,” he says, waving a hand towards his leg in explanation. “It hasn’t healed properly. And the atmosphere here…”

“No need to apologize,” she responds brightly, slipping easily back into scientist mode. “Your body is completely unaccustomed to being here. Cardiovascular, inner ear, respiratory—everything is out of whack. And that’s not even starting on your leg, which we’ll have someone attend to as soon as we land. But not to worry, we’ll have you fixed up properly in no time.”

She falters a bit, unsure what to do. In this context, she doesn’t quite recognize him. She sits carefully, keeping a respectful distance and wondering, oddly, if she has cheated on him. Or if she had cheated on Fitz with him. Maybe, she thinks humorlessly, none of them have done anything wrong and it’s the bloody cosmos after all.

“Jemma,” Will sighs. He turns towards her, wincing slightly as he puts too much pressure on his injured leg. She immediately reaches out, a warning already forming on her lips, but the directness of his gaze stops her. His ability to cut through any artifice is something she’s long admired, but she’s not sure she’s ready for this conversation.

“I’m glad you made it back to him. I get it, you know. He’s not what I was expecting, but I could see right away why you loved him.”

Her eyes burn with the effort of holding her tears in check as guilt cascades over her. “I care about you,” she says, her voice trembling.

“I care about you, too. I always will. We’ve survived something together that no one else ever will. At least, I hope no one else ever will. Jemma, I never believed I’d be here and you saved me. Now we both deserve to be the happiest we can be.”

She nods, thoughtful. “And you think—”

“No,” he interrupts her. “I _know._ I know what your version of happily ever after is. And I lived fourteen years without the sun, so no way in hell am I moving someplace as cold and rainy as Scotland.”

Jemma laughs, sharply and unexpectedly. “It’s beautiful, though,” she says when she’s recovered, glancing up unconsciously, her eyes tracking Fitz’s movements through the window.

Will snorts. “Yeah, he is.”

++

Jemma inches over slowly until her leg is just touching Fitz’s beneath the blanket. She thinks he doesn’t notice, and then she realizes his finger is hovering over the same line in the article he’d been reading a minute ago. She smiles, enjoying how close he is and how carefully he’s holding himself motionless.

“Do you ever worry,” she murmurs, relishing the warmth of his body seeping into her own, “that we’ve been just friends for too long? That maybe the physical chemistry won’t be there?”

Fitz gulps and even in the dim light she can make out a faint redness rising on his cheeks. She bites her lower lip to hold back a laugh because she doesn’t want him to think she’s laughing _at_ him. But she’s always secretly loved making him blush.

“Um,” he starts, pausing to clear his throat. “No, not-not really.”

Jemma leans back, filing this information away. “Oh? Why not?”

He tosses the magazine onto the nightstand and brings a hand up to rub at the back of his neck, smiling self-deprecatingly. “Because once I allowed myself to acknowledge how I felt, it was um...very difficult to not think about, you know, dating. And...things.”

She tilts her head, trying to peer over at him, although he’s clearly avoiding her eyes. “‘And things’? You mean like sex?”

Fitz drops his hand suddenly and gapes at her like he’s short-circuited. She does laugh then and prepares to launch into a lecture over the fact that they’re scientists and should be perfectly capable of discussing sex rationally, but Fitz waves a hand to stop her.

“But I mean, I completely understand if you’re worried,” he mumbles.

She furrows her brows. “You do?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ve seen the guys you’re usually into. I don’t exactly fit the mold. I don’t look like Will—”

“Ugh, _Fitz_!”

“Hey, don’t ‘ugh, Fitz!’ me! You’re the one who brought it up.”

“I brought it up because we spend all our time together and we sleep together every night, but nothing else happens!” She faces him fully, hyper-conscious of the hair tingling on her arms, the heat of his leg pressed against hers, the way he is very deliberately not looking anywhere below her chin. Her breath catches and she smirks when Fitz’s eyes involuntarily flicker lower.

“I just wondered if there was some reason you weren’t particularly interested.”

Fitz swallows thickly. “I’m, uh, interested.”

“Good,” she says, sliding over until she’s straddling his lap. His eyes flutter shut and something akin to torture flashes across his face.

“I don’t even have condoms,” he protests, and she rolls her eyes.

“We’ll discuss the importance of preparation later. But both of our recent tests were clean, and you _know_ I have an IUD.”

“I do?”

Jemma slaps his shoulder lightly. “Fitz! I spent hours complaining about how the doctor was way more aggressive than necessary and how painful it was!”

“Oh, right,” Fitz blanches. “To be honest I sort of blocked that out. You went into entirely too much detail. It sounded so painful it started making me queasy.”

“I’m sorry, it started making _you_ queasy?” She shakes her head quickly. “Never mind, not important right now. We’ll discuss this later as well.”

She holds his face steady and bends toward him, somehow chilled and burning at the same time. His breath fans across her face and she’s just managed to taste him when he reaches up, covering her hands with his own and pushing her gently back.

“ _Fitz_ ,” she groans. She cannot remember ever being this frustrated in her life, and she had been stranded on a desert planet, for god’s sake. “I thought this was what you wanted? What we wanted?”

“I do,” he insists. “It’s just that our friendship is...is...linear. Simple, comfortable.”

“Effortless, really,” she interjects.

“But soon as we deviate from that path, change becomes exponential. It’s the point of no return."

She pauses, considering his point. “Just to be clear, are you comparing us sleeping together to crossing the event horizon?”

He nods sheepishly, his hands settling at her waist, and she can’t help laughing at the absurdity of having this conversation in their current position.

“It’s quite lovely when you think about it like that. And also terrifying.”

“Exactly!” he says, relief washing over him at her apparent understanding. She traces his face deliberately, running a finger along his eyebrow, down his jawline.

“What are you most afraid of?” she asks. “We could have our friendship and so much more.”

“I haven’t done this before, not really, not when it matters like this." She can read in the lines creasing his forehead how anxious he is, how long he has been working this particular problem. "You’re the most important person in the world to me, and if-if I messed it up and we weren’t even friends, I don’t, I don’t think—”

“Maybe,” she interrupts him, “we should stop thinking altogether.” She draws him towards her again, placing a kiss to his nose, his cheek, inching closer and closer to where she actually wants to be.

He breathes heavily, his inhalations deep and his exhalations jagged. “And just do, yeah,” he mumbles against her lips. She can feel the exact moment his energy changes, the tension morphing from fear and uncertainty to something sharper. He pulls her more firmly onto his lap and she moans at the contact.

When she grinds down on him, her desire twists into need because she can’t possibly be as close to him as she wants to be. In the future, some point soon, they will go slowly, tracing scars and freckles with their tongues, mapping out new territory and holding each other like they're fragile porcelain. But now she cannot stop because she will collapse in on herself like a dying star if her body isn’t allowed to consume his.

“Fitz,” she pants, hardly recognizing the ruined quality of her own voice. “ _Please_.”

He sucks at her neck, groaning as he pushes up against her, then flips her suddenly and falls heavily on top of her. His weight is delicious and not nearly enough. She pulls at his hair as his fingers slip beneath the waistband of her pajamas. He props himself up on an elbow and looks at her, his pupils blown wide. It’s almost too much, the intensity of his stare, and when his fingers rub over her clit her eyes snap shut. She arches up, trying desperately to satisfy the ache.

She reaches down blindly, grabbing him through his boxers and pumping until he loses his rhythm. “Jesus,” he hisses, pressing two fingers inside her without finesse and causing her to shudder around him. She squeezes his cock, relishing the throbbing heat in her hand.

Jemma is so close she could fall apart right now, but it's not what she wants, so she shoves him onto his back, pausing just long enough to shimmy out of her underwear before yanking his boxers down his legs. He gapes at her for a moment, then lifts his hands to palm her breasts. His fingers are calloused and rough, and the friction makes her feel like she might jump out of her skin.

She leans forward, biting at his pulse point while guiding him inside her. He fills her so completely that she cries out, pausing her frantic movements and resting a hand on his chest.

"Jemma—?" He blinks at her in concern, holding her in place. He looks as wrecked as she feels.

"No,” she begs, grinding hard again, feverishly chasing the building pressure. “I'm good. Don't-don’t stop." She grabs the headboard, her knuckles turning white.

Fitz moves up, forcing her against him as he licks a trail from one breast to the other. She squeezes her eyes shut and doesn’t notice him angling his hand between their bodies until his fingers once again find her clit. He barely sweeps over her aching nub before she comes with a strangled sob. It’s all she can do to hold on as she tightens and spasms around him.

He’s lost all control over his own movements, but she can barely hear the way their bodies haphazardly hit together over the rushing in her ears. She’s drowning in her own pleasure when he thrusts into her one last time, his release filling her.

"Oh my god," he gasps, panting into her chest. Sweat drips down her back and the air con switching back on immediately chills her, but she knows it will be a long time before she has the strength to move and grab a blanket. Instead, she pushes Fitz until he's flat on his back and collapses on top of him.

He shifts slightly, gently pulling out of her, and she whimpers at the loss. "Sorry," he whispers into her hair, wrapping his arms fully around her and twisting his legs over hers. She's sweaty and sticky and completely entangled in him, and she has never felt more satisfied.

"See?" she says, nuzzling her face into his neck, unable to resist gloating when she's right. "Wasn't this much better than _not_ having sex?"

“Well, sure, it was fine," Fitz replies. "But I pictured the first time differently. More seduction, definitely some mood music. That’s why I’m the romantic one, you know.”

"Shut up," she huffs. And then she can't help it, she starts giggling.

"What?" he murmurs, without any hint of anxiety at her laughter, his voice relaxed and sated.

"It's just, could you even have imagined us doing this, back at the Academy?"

Fitz hesitates a millisecond too long and she gasps, somehow lifting herself enough to peer into his eyes. "You did! You imagined us having sex back at the Academy!"

He shakes his head valiantly and then sighs in resignation. "I mean, okay, on occasion I might have thought about it. More out of scientific curiosity than anything else."

She grins in victory, but then decides to put him out of his misery. "I might have thought about it occasionally from a place of pure scientific curiosity as well."

His mouth drops open. Right when she’s begun to worry he’s slipping back into thoughts of what they could have been, he laughs, his whole body shaking helplessly beneath hers.

“God, we’re such idiots,” he says, before reaching up and pulling her head down, slotting his lips against hers.

“Mm,” she agrees in between kisses. “It’s okay, though. Now we can do this any time we want.”

“Not exactly _any time_. I think Coulson expects us to show up for work every now and then.”

Jemma hums thoughtfully, turning to bite softly at his earlobe and making him shiver. “Okay, not any time we want. But probably again tonight. Say, in a few minutes or so?”

Fitz groans, turning them both until they’re on their sides facing each other. “You’re going to be the death of me, Jemma Simmons,” he sighs, although his words are somewhat belied by the growing pressure against her leg.

She smiles smugly but any retort she might have uttered stalls in her throat, because he’s gazing at her with such blatant adoration that her breath catches. This, she realizes, is what it feels like to be _light,_ to be at peace with your own history, joyous at the idea of a future, in love with the present. She could attempt to bottle this feeling but she’d never be able to, because it’s too much and it’s unending. All she can do is step under the waterfall and let it consume her.

“I’m so happy,” she confesses, her eyes suddenly moist. “I can’t believe I’m allowed to be this happy.”

Fitz kisses her forehead, her cheek, marking a trail along her face in reenactment of a moment that had once been her greatest sorrow, softening every pain and transforming all of it into something beautiful. When he reaches her lips, his touch is feathersoft. “I’ve always loved you,” he says. “I’ll love you forever.”

It’s not even a promise; it’s a truth and she knows it the way she knows atomistic attribute drills and the laws of thermodynamics. She runs her fingers along his face, scratching at his stubble, and draws him towards her. The darkening of the automatic ambient lighting indicates the sun has set, and for the first time since Maveth she finds that she’s not afraid it will refuse to rise again.

In the end, words fail her because what she feels for Fitz has always been too large, unnameable and undefinable. “Let me show you,” she whispers, and then she doesn’t say anything at all.


End file.
